I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to data communication. More particularly, the present invention relates to a novel and improved high data rate, wireless packet data communications system.
II. Description of the Related Art
The explosive growth of computer networks, such as the Internet, has spawned demands for high data rate infrastructures that can support the enormous amount of data traffic generated by these networks. Approximately concurrent with the growth of the Internet is the deployment and acceptance of wireless communications systems capable of supporting a variety of applications. However, earlier generations of wireless communications systems are generally designed for voice communication and are not efficient at transmitting data traffic generated by the Internet.
An example of such earlier generation wireless communications systems is a code division multiple access (CDMA) system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,307, issued Feb. 13, 1990 to Gilhousen et al., entitled “SPREAD SPECTRUM MULTIPLE ACCESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM USING SATELLITE OR TERRESTRIAL REPEATERS,” and U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,459, issued Apr. 7, 1992 to Gilhousen et al., entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GENERATING WAVEFORMS IN A CDMA CELLULAR TELEPHONE SYSTEM,” both assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. These CDMA systems are typically designed to conform to the “TIA/EIA/IS-95 Mobile Station-Base Station Compatibility Standard for Dual-Mode Wideband Spread Spectrum Cellular System,” hereinafter referred to as the IS-95 standard.
An IS-95 compliant CDMA system is capable of supporting voice and data services over the forward and reverse communications links. Typically, each voice call or each data transmission is assigned a dedicated channel having a variable but limited data rate. In accordance with the IS-95 standard, traffic or voice data is partitioned into frames that are 20 msec in duration with data rates as high as 14.4 kbps. The frames are then transmitted over the assigned channel.
Although the IS-95 CDMA system is well suited for voice communication, it is inefficient for data communication, which is typically characterized by long periods of silence punctuated by large bursts of traffic. A newer generation wireless communications system designed to efficiently transmit data is disclosed in the aforementioned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/963,386, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,574,211, issued Jun. 3, 2003 to Padovani et al. This system allows a large portion of the available resource to be used for data transmission to a particular user at any particular moment, thereby greatly increasing the peak data rate.
Given the ever-growing demand for wireless data communication, a high data rate, wireless packet data communications system capable of supporting data traffics, such as those related to the Internet, is highly desirable.